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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29696313">The Desperate Man</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_dead_poet/pseuds/a_dead_poet'>a_dead_poet</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Based on a painting, Based on a song, M/M, Oneshot, wolfstar</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-16 02:54:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,396</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29696313</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_dead_poet/pseuds/a_dead_poet</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rain clouds come to play again, has no one told you she’s not breathing?</p><p>Remus had told him. He had told him it was a bad idea at the start. And he was right, because Remus Lupin was always right.</p><p>And now they were paying the price.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Sirius Black/Remus Lupin</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Desperate Man</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When he was four, Remus’s mum took him to an art museum. Of course, he was too young to remember much of it, but there were enough pictures and stories about it for Remus to pretend he remembered. His memories of the day were like a faked check. From the outside, it looked real and crisp, official. He remembered the occurrence, he knew it had happened, but the value of the memory, the feelings, the scents and tastes and images were ones his older brain plugged into the equation.</p><p>Something missing from the check but present in Remus’s subconscious was when Hope, his mum, ran into some old girl from school. A girl that would’ve been her sorority sister, if Hope had ever wanted to go to college. While being unusually quick-witted, Hope would rather make out with someone on the couch and smoke weed than study, and it was a trait Remus found himself growing into. But in this bubble of time, Remus only knew weed by the smell of his mum’s brownies, and he didn’t know what making out was. In the small envelope of memory hovering in Remus’s subconscious, Hope was leading him out of the Picasso room when she suddenly stopped.</p><p>“I’ll be damned. Marietta Holloway? Is that really you?”</p><p>“Hope Howell.”</p><p>The two women embraced, not as friends anymore, but as two people who used to be friends and felt the need to keep up their facade of friendliness, as if paparazzi were hovering nearby, hungry for ways to expose them.</p><p>“And this must be Richard.”</p><p>“Remus, actually. Oh, and it’s Lupin now.”</p><p>The woman Hope referred to as Marietta smacked her horselike lips. “You got hitched to Big Dick Lupin? Shut up.”</p><p>Hope rolled her eyes. “You met him once. Not everyone that goes to some fancy boarding school is big.”</p><p>Marietta adjusted the straps of her hot pink bra and flashed unusually white teeth at the tiny family. “Never dubbed you as an art freak, Hope. What do you say we take a break?”</p><p>Hope looked at her old acquaintance and back down at her little boy, who at this point was becoming anxious.</p><p>“Sure. But not for long, Mari, I’m a mother now.”</p><p>“Hitched to Big Dick Lupin,” Marietta muttered under her breath, shaking her head. She led the Lupins through the Van Gogh room, the Frida Kahlo room, and past a small alcove of Gustave Courbet, intent on slipping through the heavy metal door next to it, and that was when Remus saw it.</p><p>It didn’t occur to Remus that he was looking at a portrait. He only saw emotion. The wide eyes of the shockingly handsome man bared his soul, not staring into it but rather through it, as if there was something important behind it. His hands ran through his luscious black hair, veins popping against the ivory skin, the bit of blood behind his cheeks in stark contrast to the skin pulled tight over his defined cheekbones. While Marietta and Hope shared stale cigarettes and fake, polite laughs peppered with fake, polite compliments, Remus only saw the man, the man who was scared, the man who was raw, the man who felt real and right in front of eyes, and Remus couldn’t help but feel that the reason the man looked so hurt was him.</p><p>
  
</p><p>Twelve years later, and that was what Remus saw now.</p><p>Rain pounded in his ears, making his migraine only worse. He knelt on the floor of the Forbidden Forest, fingernails clenching in the dirt, as if looking for something to hold on to. He was shirtless and battered, old and fresh scars alike marring his chest, strips of bandages vigorously rippling in the wind, being pulled off of his long arms. His chest heaved, and his lungs ached, and his heart wept and sobbed and screamed and cried but wasn’t heard.</p><p>The man was in front of him. Sirius was the man.</p><p>Remus felt like he was falling off the edge of the world.</p><p>Sirius was spread in front of him, collapsed on the mud, arms and legs aside, baring his body. His hair was matted with blood and strewn about around his face, his left shoe was missing, revealing a sock with deer prancing about on it. It was a stupid Christmas present from James the year they first became Animagi. The first year they sacrificed themselves for Remus. The year Sirius cradled Remus’s face in his hands for the first time, pressed his lips to his for the first time, whispered in his ear <em> “Don’t worry, baby, we’ll be alright,” </em>for the first time.</p><p>The harsh, freezing wind whipping around Remus’s torso was nothing like Sirius’s soft cigarette-smoke breath that had grazed those very same areas. Remus lurched forward, closer to the black-haired boy, closer to his victim.</p><p>His victim.</p><p>Sirius’s chest heaved in time with the sheets of rain, scratch marks raking from his collarbone to his hip, pools of blood gathering on his stomach. Ribbons of skin shredded off his right arm began to reek in the weather, screams echoing from Sirius’s throat with every drop of water that landed on his exposed wounds. The wolf had ripped through his skin straight through to the bone, and the rib he cracked in second year playing Qudditich was in plain sight. Every sound that came from his abused vocal chords shattered Remus’s heart further, he’d done this, he’d done this, he’d done this.</p><p>He was the one who had torn Sirius’s right arm open, hungry for blood, hungry for pain, hungry for control and satisfaction and death. He was the one to shred Sirius’s once-perfect chest, knocking him nearly unconscious with one swipe of his claws. He was locked in the prison that took joy in lunging at Sirius’s neck as Sirius screamed, begged for James, begged for Peter, begged for Remus to stop.</p><p>Remus hadn’t stopped.</p><p>He was the one who’d growled and taken after Sirius, chasing him towards the tree, running him straight into a branch that left a welt and a bruise on Sirius’s cheek. He was the one to stand over Sirius, howling, ready to dive in and enjoy his prey, drink his blood like fine wine, pick his bones of every shred of meat and memory they’d ever held.</p><p>He was the one to make the purple hickey, still visible, on Sirius’s neck, in the broom closet in the Charms corridor before third period a few days ago.</p><p>Remus’s lungs screamed as he crawled forwards, the toll of his actions lacerating his soul, his thoughts a mess, his wounds burning with agony and his heart burning with guilt as he reached out.</p><p>He had done this, he had done this, he had done this.</p><p><em>“JAMES!” </em>he tried to scream, but the effort died in his throat. He was barely able to pull his head away from the body beneath him as to not puke on Sirius, acid burning his throat as he coughed up blood and pain. Sirius let out a breathy whimper, a sound Remus was used to hearing in pleasure, not in pain.</p><p>“We’ll be alright,” Remus whispered through his tears, “It’s gonna be okay, baby. Sirius. Hold on, I promise, it’s gonna be okay.” Sobs won the battle against his words as he collapsed onto his love, causing Sirius’s blood to coat his skin. Remus thought he knew pain, but he didn’t. Nothing compared to this. He’d rather die himself than watch Sirius die; Watching Sirius die was watching his reason to live leave his life.</p><p>Even as Sirius’s last breathes shuddered through his chest, he looked beautiful. Raven hair framed his angular face, high cheekbones and stubble adding to the elegance of his much-vaunted body. His long, nimble fingers that once grasped Remus’s hair were now weakly curled against the mud and puddles of water and blood. Laying there, in the rain, Sirius looked like a fairy tale, white skin and black hair. He looked like Snow White, lying in her casket, waiting for a kiss of true love to awaken him. Sirius was the painting, and the painting had been slashed through with a knife, unable to be saved.</p><p>Remus lowered his lips to Sirius’s cold ones.</p><p>Sirius did not wake up.</p><p>
  
</p><p>
  <em> Rain clouds come to play again, has no one told you she’s not breathing? </em>
</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The painting referenced is “The Desparate Man” by Gustave Courbet!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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